The Nexus Archive
Moral Biography · Biography
Life of Pericles
by Plutarch · The Judge of Character · Greco-Roman World, c. 46-after 119
Plutarch weighs Pericles' education, leadership, ambition, restraint, war, and civic reputation as moral evidence.
- Advanced
- ~1 hr 15 min read
- 5 chapter guides
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the Chapter 8 guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
The Statesman and the City He Shapes
A city can depend on a man whose power also makes it uneasy. Plutarch’s Pericles works through speech, patience and the careful management of his own presence. His composure invites admiration, but it can look like coldness; his authority can promise protection while provoking fear of domination.
Athens’s monuments and empire complicate one another. Magnificence can express civic greatness while also depending on tribute, persuasion, and concentrated leadership.
Plutarch writes lives to stir a desire for virtue, yet the materials before him are quarrelsome: comic attacks, remembered sayings, partisan accusations and incompatible reports. His affection for Pericles does not make that evidence fall silent. The distance between an admirable character and a disputed act gives the portrait its tension.
The opening pages
Chapter 1
1 On seeing certain wealthy foreigners in Rome carrying puppies and young monkeys about in their bosoms and fondling them, Caesar asked, we are told, if the women in their country did not bear children, thus in right princely fashion rebuking those who squander on animals that proneness to love and loving affection which is ours by nature, and which is due only to our fellow-men. 2 Since, then, our souls are by nature possessed of great fondness for learning and fondness for seeing, it is surely reasonable to chide those who abuse this fondness on objects all unworthy either of their eyes or ears, to the neglect of those which are good and serviceable. Our outward sense, since it apprehends the objects which encounter it by virtue of their mere impact upon it, must needs, perhaps, regard everything that presents itself, be it useful or useless; 3 but in the exercise of his mind every man, if he pleases, has the natural power to turn himself away in every case, and to change, without the least difficulty, to that object upon which he himself determines. It is meet, therefore, that he pursue what is best, to the end that he may not merely regard it, but also be edified by regarding it. A colour is suited to the eye if its freshness, and its pleasantness as well, stimulates and nourishes the vision; and so our intellectual vision must be applied to such objects as, by their very charm, invite it onward to its own proper good.
4 Such objects are to be found in virtuous deeds; these implant in those who search them out a great and zealous eagerness which leads to imitation. In other cases, admiration of the deed is not immediately accompanied by an impulse to do it. Nay, many times, on the contrary, while we delight in the work, we despise the workman, as, for instance, in the case of perfumes and dyes: we take a delight in them, but dyers and perfumers we regard as illiberal and vulgar folk. 5 Therefore it was a fine saying of Antisthenes, when he heard that Ismenias was an excellent piper: "But he's a worthless man," said he, "otherwise he wouldn't be so good a piper." And so Philip once said to his son, who, as the wine went round, plucked the strings charmingly and skilfully, "Art not ashamed to pluck the strings so well?" It is enough, surely, if a king have leisure to hear others pluck the strings, and he pays great deference to the Muses if he be but a spectator of such contests.
Chapter guides · 5
Chapter 8
The making of public composure
Education, reserve and measured speech give Pericles authority, while Plutarch asks what makes a life worth imitating.
An example to act upon
Plutarch distinguishes delight in a beautiful work from the desire to imitate a virtuous person. That distinction explains his choice of biography, though it also carries his disdain for manual and artistic occupations. Pericles enters as an example whose deeds should provoke judgment and emulation, not merely admiration.
Discipline and its critics
Anaxagoras helps form the grave bearing and controlled speech that distinguish Pericles. The story of his patience with an abusive stranger makes restraint visible in action. Ion finds arrogance in the same manner. Plutarch favors the generous interpretation, but preserves the disagreement instead of giving an uncontested portrait.
Persuasion under restraint
Pericles courts the many while limiting his public appearances. His rival Thucydides, son of Melesias, jokes that Pericles can talk spectators out of believing they saw him lose a wrestling match. Yet the orator also prays against an ill-chosen word. Authority here depends on managing both an audience and oneself. The chapter closes with the few sayings of his that survived, among them his warning to Sophocles that a general must keep his eyes as clean as his hands, and with his funeral speech for the men who fell at Samos, whom he called immortal, like the gods.
Chapter 16
The city’s wealth, the leader’s power
Public payments and building works widen participation while helping Pericles secure an increasingly commanding position.
Winning the people
Unable to match Cimon’s private largesse, Pericles turns to public payments and attacks the power of the Areiopagus. Plutarch treats these measures critically, then describes a change from accommodating the people to guiding and sometimes resisting them. His account joins political competition to a judgment about leadership.
Who pays for magnificence
Opponents condemn the use of allied contributions to adorn Athens. Pericles answers that Athens fulfills its military obligation and may use the surplus for lasting glory and employment. Plutarch admires the buildings and the work they provide, while preserving the accusation that the city’s splendor rests on domination.
Power without private enrichment
After the ostracism of his political rival Thucydides, Pericles exercises extraordinary influence. Plutarch measures political success against the habits of character that produced and survived it: freedom from bribery, exact household accounts and attention to public need. The story of the neglected Anaxagoras also exposes a limit—someone whose wisdom sustains the statesman needs care in return.
Chapter 23
Caution within an empire
Pericles limits dangerous ambitions abroad while defending Athenian power with force, settlement and calculated expenditure.
Chapter 31
A reputation fought over
The Samian war and the approach of conflict with Sparta bring conflicting accounts of Pericles’s motives into sharp relief.
Chapter 39
Power, Loss and Restraint
War and plague bring Pericles public anger and private grief. Plutarch’s closing judgment emphasizes restraint toward personal enemies.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read Life of Pericles?
- About 1 hr 15 min in total.
- How difficult is Life of Pericles?
- Advanced. A mid-length biography; about an hour of reading.
- Which translation is this?
- The Bernadotte Perrin translation from the Ancient Greek. The text follows The Life of Pericles, in Plutarch's Lives, Loeb Classical Library, Volume III (1916).
- Can I read Life of Pericles for free?
- Life of Pericles is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription. The opening above and two chapter guides on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- 5 chapter guides, written by the Nexus editors. Two open in full here; the rest show their opening line.
About Plutarch
Plutarch was a Greek biographer, essayist, and moral philosopher whose Parallel Lives shaped how later generations understood Greek and Roman greatness. His biographies compare character, ambition, virtue, vice, and the moral meaning of public action.
“What does power reveal about a person's character?”
Plutarch is one of the great source engines for Nexus. He gives conquerors, statesmen, and republics a moral frame.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. Life of Pericles is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.